Should You Listen to Grandma or Dr. Oz and Other Experts for Weight Loss Ideas that Work for Post Menopausal Women in 2015

This Grandma will try anything to lose weight. Anything I hear, see, or read about new or quirky tips, I grab onto. I have written posts about all the new ideas for 2014. After these holidays, like all of us, this Grandma needs to drop a few pounds. Like all of us, I want easy and fast.

So, under the easy column, here are the two new best I found:

WORK OUT SOMEWHERE WARM

A research study shows that we should stay warm when we exercise and we will lose more weight. It seems that we burn more calories when we exercise in a warmer environment. Yes, to Florida, but it can be a warm gym. And, not only that, the study shows that exercising in a warmer environment helps keep us from being hungrier when we finish exercising. This grandma always craves carbs and apparently working out somewhere warm makes us crave less carbs after working out. Take a look for yourself.

WORK OUT TEN MINUTES WITH ONE MINUTE OF HIGH INTENSITY

A research study shows that just one minute of high-intensity exercise in a ten minute workout can improve fitness and health. And, not only that, the study shows that we do not have to do the entire minute at once. We can do it in three twenty second sprints, just so long as we do each of the twenty seconds as hard as we can. Even this Grandma can do ten minutes in intervals. Take a look for yourself.

Whenever I speak to long (we never say old) friends who are Dr. Oz followers, they are always quoting his messages about diet and weight loss. I must admit I too have tried his recommendations.

Now I find out that Dr. Oz is just like the rest of television. His medical advice is just entertainment just like the legal programs and other doctor programs we watch are just entertainment and have little to do with reality.

That is the problem. When a television show is set up to look like a reality show, we think it is reality. Right in time for the New Year so we can be forewarned, in the Sun Sentinel, January 1, 2015, Karen Kaplan, in “Dr. Oz Comes Up Short on Science,” tells us that researchers have found little scientific and medical support for Dr. Oz’s advice, 25% of which was about diet and 18% of which was about weight loss. It seems that only 21% of Dr. Oz’s total recommendations could be supported “by what researchers considered ‘believable’ evidence.” This Grandma loves this quote:

“Consumers should be skeptical about any recommendations provided on television medical talk shows,” the researchers wrote in a study published last month in BMJ. “Viewers need to realize that the recommendations may not be supported by higher evidence or presented with enough balanced information to adequately inform decision making.”

For those of us grandmas who have experienced menopause, we have also experienced the weight gain that accompanies it. This Grandma was not only frustrated by the weight gain but the impossibility of taking it off. Fortunately, I found a wonderful and compassionate real medical doctor. He advised me to hold tight until menopause truly ended, and confirmed that it ended with blood testing. Then, he gave me guidelines that actually worked: “Eat less and exercise more.”

I hope that this brings a smile to your face, as it brought to mine. But actually, real weight loss requires change in lifestyle, change in habits and change in how we view eating. We have to eat smart as well as less, while we exercise more.

My doctor provided me “with enough balanced information to adequately inform decision making.” The eat smart part of the advice he gave was my lifesaver. I now know how to lose the weight I have gained over the holidays. Actually, all my long friends were astonished that I actually ate sweets and such this holiday season, as I have been compulsive (yes, this is my most significant trait about anything and everything I put my mind too), about following this doctor’s advice over the years for weight maintenance.

Here are just a few of his tips that I think are easy and fast for weight loss in 2015:

WOMEN’S BODIES KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH FAT, NOT SUGAR

He said that we are bombarded with advertisements and food that is low fat, and to be low fat and taste good, the sugar is pumped up. He said not to eat low fat. He said to cut sugar out of my diet. Apparently, women’s bodies know how to rid themselves of fat, not sugar, as we age. This is easier than you think. When I go to a restaurant, I say I am diabetic and cannot eat sugar and ask what on the menu does not contain sugar. That is when you hear the truth. There are only two things on the menu at P.F. Changs that I can eat. I avoid P.F. Changs. Labels on food packages list the items in order of what is the most to least. I try not to eat any prepackaged food that has sugar in the first five ingredients.

I try to eat sugar free anything and everything. This Grandma loves chocolate. I could live on chocolate. Russell Stove makes the best tasting sugar free solid dark chocolate miniatures. Remember, a previous post said we eat less chocolate if we have to unwrap each piece. This product qualifies. Each serving is 5 pieces and a total of 200 calories. It is so rich and sweet (made with Splenda, not that stuff that gives you a stomach ache), and you have to unwrap each piece, that it is hard to eat five pieces in a sitting. Thank you, Russell Stover, for making it so hard to unwrap each piece.

On the other hand, a little olive oil and butter is not so bad in moderation. Natural sugar, such as in fruit, is not so bad in moderation. Not such bad advice.

CARBS ARE THE ENEMY OF WOMEN

Grandpa and every man I know can lose weight on Atkins. This Grandma could not. Thanks to my doctor, I know that carbs are the enemy of women.

I love carbs. I had to cut pasta, bread and potatoes out of my diet,when they were previously staples of my diet, for weight loss.

If you must eat a carb, eat it in moderation and eat a protein with it. I cannot remember specifically why, other than it has something to do with how the carb is digested and how hungry carbs make us.

For weight maintenance, one can let up on a complete ban. Just eat that coveted piece of pizza, with the crust, for breakfast. Save the leftover pasta that your significant other had for dinner, and eat it for breakfast the next day. If you must have carbs as a woman post menopause, carbs are to be only eaten in the morning, if at all, and only before 11 am so you can burn them off during the day.

Yes, today is a no carb day. This Grandma can lose weight in a no carb day. I try to add no carb days in a weight maintenance program. Unfortunately, since I am now trying to lose the weight I gained over the holidays, today is the first of several no carb days in a row.

REVERSE PYRAMID AND EAT HEAVY IN THE MORNING AND LIGHT AT NIGHT

I have heard this a lot, but listened when my doctor told me this would ease my weight loss. Eat a vegetable omelet for dinner, preferably, at least for lunch, rather than breakfast. Eat the salad for dinner, not lunch. Eat your biggest meal for breakfast and your smallest meal for dinner. Of course, do not eat late, was the advice the doctor gave me. Grandpa hates that I want to have dinner by 6 pm. It is not the ‘early bird” thing of, God Forbid, aging. It is that I want the food to be used by my body as fuel before bedtime.

My best weight loss day is a nearly no carb day, when I have had water before each meal, Greek yogurt, a few ounces of orange juice to take vitamins and coffee for breakfast, a vegetable omelet and a small fruit salad for lunch, and a salad with grilled chicken for dinner, dipping my fork into an oil and vinegar salad dressing rather than pouring dressing on. And of course, I must have my dark chocolate or sugar free ice cream as a snack. The omelet for lunch sustains me the entire afternoon and keeps me from an afternoon snack.

Breakfast is my splurge meal always. It helps to be able to splurge sometimes and satisfy cravings. One can get used to lasagna for breakfast. Lasagna always tastes better reheated.

WHEN YOU THINK YOU ARE HUNGRY, YOU ARE PROBABLY THIRSTY

Drink eight glasses of water, my doctor told me, and drink at least one glass of water before each meal. Now, when I think I am hungry, I reach for a glass of water instead. Actually, I try to drink two glasses of water as I am compulsive. I try to drink water all day long, instead of eating. I repeat the mantra, “when you think you are hungry, you are probably thirsty.”

Unfortunately, for me, I love diet coke. I am trying to cut the habit of carbonated drinks. I limit myself to one a day.

This Grandma thinks that is the trick to easy and fast. Some things are easy to do “cold turkey” and some things just require cutting back.

When my doctor asked me what my goal was for weight loss, I said I did not think I could even verbalize a goal, because losing weight had been a losing proposition for me for so many years of middle age and menopause. I told him a modest number, although I had a real number in my head.

Then, I committed myself to weight loss. Being very – very — very strict, I reached the real number in less than four months.

But then, I have to admit that I am compulsive and when I put my mind to something I usually am able to make it happen. And, being under the supervision and special care of a medical doctor, with his extra assistance, was really my key. You have to find your key to keep you on course.

So goes this no carb day. . . . one day at a time, not thinking that I will have to repeat this no carb day tomorrow.

Eat less and exercise more is the reality of weight loss. I cannot bear to talk about exercise right now, other than interval exercise is the easiest, and most bang for your buck. Think Canyon Ranch technique of warm up (5-10 minutes which is not included as exercise) to 1 minute of high intensity, off to do a set of weight bearing exercise such as bicep curls, 2 minutes (back on treadmill), repeat five times. There, you have your ten minutes cardio and one minute of high intensity. Yes, you can do twenty seconds three times during this instead. To be honest, the in between weight bearing exercises also are not included in Canyon Ranch interval exercise routine, and they have great machines available at Canyon Ranch for the five exercises. Their interval exercise is really a total of 30-40 minutes to do it right. Think at least three days a week for maintenance, and unfortunately daily for weight loss.

Guess where I am off to after I complete this post—with a heavy jacket as the gym is cold and I must be warm, of course. I am still wishing easy and fast works.

Question: Should you listen to Grandma or Dr. Oz and other experts for weight loss ideas that work for post menopausal women in 2015?

Answer: You should listen to yourself and decide what will work for you in the goals you make for yourself in LIFESTYLE CHANGE in 2015. Commitment is the first key.

Repeating the mantras, and following most of them, most of the time, helps me, and I hope will help you. Good luck in weight loss or weight maintenance in 2015!